FILIPINOS love to pet anything —fish, iguanas, birds, dogs, cats and even the big and scary ones like tigers and snakes.
You don’t have to go far just to affirm this fact, just look at your neighborhood or just from where you are at right now, you would see someone walking a dog or posting “Instagrammable” photos or videos of their pets.
However, owning a pet or pets requires a number of responsibilities, which are often overlooked by those who take in animals in their households. Simple responsibilities like providing a safe and secure shelter, proper feeding, proper health management and of course securing the safety of the animal and the people around your pet. These are really simple but a lot of pet owners fail to do these things.
As September 28 is World Rabies Day, it is just timely to talk about the current status of the Philippines when it comes to rabies control. The Department of Health (DOH) set 2030 to be the year wherein the Philippines will be rabies-free. This means we don’t have to worry about animal bites and deaths caused by rabies. This would mean all the stray dogs and cats nationwide are vaccinated with anti-rabies and/or all Filipinos have really understood the importance of pre-exposure vaccination.
Rabies remains to be one of the utmost health concerns of the Philippine government, as the country belongs to the top 10 countries that have high incidence of rabies cases.
Rabies is a highly fatal infectious disease that may affect all species of warm-blooded animals, including humans; transmitted by the bite of infected animals including dogs, cats, skunks, wolves, foxes, raccoons and bats, and caused by a neurotropic species of Lyssavirus, a member of the family Rhabdoviridae, that has tropism for the central nervous system and the salivary glands; inhalation infection possible (aerosolized virus in bat caves, attics).
The symptoms are characteristics of a profound disturbance of the nervous system, excitement, aggressiveness and madness, followed by paralysis and death. In animals, clinical signs are variable, and sometimes drooling and tongue paralysis are the only signs. Transmission of the virus can occur before clinical signs are expressed.
According to Dr. Nicole Perreras, Medical Specialist III, head of Animal Bite Clinic at the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM) in Alabang, Muntinlupa, the country’s rabies mortality is 300 to 600 annually and 50 percent of the recorded fatalities were children between five and 14 years old; this figure, however, had already decreased over the years. Meanwhile, records show that the number of people bitten by animals is increasing and the reason for the decrease in numbers of deaths can be attributed to several factors— improved surveillance and services, which enabled bite cases to seek treatment at established public Animal Bite Treatment Centers (ABTC) and/or private Animal Bite Centers.
The www.webbline.com listed at least 405 public and private ABTCs nationwide.
The Health&Fitness recent report said, “In 2015 a total of 783,879 animal bites across the country were registered in 2015. This is 10 percent higher than in 2014, which recorded a total of 683,802 cases of animal bites. The DOH records show that from 2010 to 2016, a total of 1,713 human rabies deaths, or average of 245, every year, while a total of 245 or 65 per year children below 15 years old were recorded in the same period.”
The government alone cannot solve or eradicate rabies, even if it provides everyone free rabies vaccination. Rabies-free Philippines can only be achieved if everyone will contribute to this goal.
To realize the 2030 goal, the DOH together with several agencies like the Department of Education, Department of Agriculture and some private sectors are working together to reach out to more people. The DOH has several activities to address its vision toward a rabies-free Philippines.
Still, this will remain a goal unless the people who call themselves pet owners will do their part. In the province of Cavite, stray dogs and cats are everywhere despite barangay and municipal ordinances. Some of these stray dogs used to be the apple of the eye of their owners, some of them were abandoned in the streets, and some of them survived the harsh life in the streets. Because rabies is viral, it can be transmitted easily from one dog or cat to another, and even to humans.
Responsible pet ownership is one of the keys that will make the programs of the government successful. Sending your pet to a clinic for rabies vaccination will help a lot in curbing the disease. Another important vaccination that pet owners can get is the pre-exposure prophylaxis (PreP), a preventative treatment before exposure to the virus. If the pet owner can also provide PreP to everyone in his/her household, rabies cases will surely be minimized.
Rabies vaccines for your pets are available in all ABTCs and you can also get your PreP in these centers.
In reality, the goal of the DOH to be rabies-free in 2030 can be achieved even earlier if all pet owners will be responsible for their pets and for the people surrounding their animals. Spending a few bucks now can spare you from more expenses, and the lives of other people are secured.